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Culture of Solidarity: Round four thematic call grantees Back

Culture of Solidarity: Round four thematic call grantees

18 Jun 2021

With the Culture of Solidarity fund, we continue to support imaginative cultural initiatives that reinforce solidarity and deal with the aftermaths of the pandemic for European societies. The Culture of Solidarity Fund was launched in 2020 as a rapid response tool to support cross-border cultural initiatives of solidarity in times of uncertainty and lockdown.

With the thematic Culture of Solidarity call to strengthen a European public space we were looking for projects that contribute to inclusive and democratic European media platforms, networks and infrastructure during and after the Corona infodemic.  For Europe needs a shared public space where a culture of solidarity can be practiced. It is there where the ongoing infodemic can be combated. Visit SHARE under our programmes to read more about the European Cultural Foundation’s work on the development of a European public space.

We welcome the grantees of the thematic Culture of Solidarity call with projects ranging from a podcast that highlights Afroitalians’ stories to a European audience – to a festival that discusses and triggers new forms of collaboration between European media beyond the EU capitals.

Meet the grantees

European Digital Rights (EDRi): Stories of resistance and reclaimed futures

The project is based on creating and promoting of stories featuring elements from different cultures across Europe to imagine a Europe centered around rights, solidarity and common public values. The chosen themes and narratives will be relatable, based on lived experiences, inspiring and promoting alternative, utopian visions of digital spaces. EDRi network members - 45 civil rights organisations based in EU (and beyond) - will support the project via the dissemination and promotion of stories at national level.
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Cultural Broadcasting Archive - Verein zur Förderung digitaler Kommunikation: European Cultural Backbone 2.0

ECB2.0 will start a federated network of European civil society media platforms including leading players. We’ll create a set of tools and practices to exchange metadata and content between existing platforms and linking to open speech recognition and search pipelines. Launching for an European digital public and democratic infrastructure, empowering civil society media to share audiences and promote a culture of solidarity across Europe. The results will be disseminated across European civil media communities by their partners.
Read the full summary

PublicSpaces: Librecast - Facilitating Sovereign Media Distribution Across Europe

The PublicSpaces Foundation has built a coalition of public and civic organisations (ranging from public broadcasters to independent outlets) from across the EU with the aim to strengthen the public domain online. Librecast raises awareness of the need of sovereign media distribution for a more inclusive and democratic media landscape. It does so by documenting best practices in a growing knowledge base, sharing the stories of the implementations and overseeing a wide range of outreach and capacity building activities.
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Autonomic Co-operative: The Co-operative Cloud: public interest infrastructure

Co-op Cloud is a public interest infrastructure: it makes self-hosting open source apps (e.g. Nextcloud, Wordpress, Jitsi) a reliable and cost-effective alternative to "Big Tech" services. The platform is made for co-operatives, non-profit groups, and individuals. With the support of the CoS Fund, they can release a polished "Beta" version in 12 - 18 months. Getting Co-op Cloud into more peoples' hands will benefit Europe by providing a technical foundation for continent-wide public interest projects that realise those same values.
Read the full summary.

Voxeurop - ECHO

This project is both about cross-border media collaborations and the development of digital tools. The investigations of up to 9 European media outlets and organisations participating in this call will be translated and disseminated to a European audience. Readers in up to 8 languages from all across the continent will have access to the produced articles, and will interact with each other in their own languages thanks to a multilingual forum and the organisation of live online multilingual events.
Read the full summary.

Varia: A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers (ATNOFS)

A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers is a collaborative project formed around intersectional, feminist, ecological servers whose communities travel between each other to share and extend their skills through live gatherings. Such platforms and tools are necessary to navigate our communications and cultural growth beyond the current media oligopolies, and democratize cultural and political expression outside obscure algorithms and advertising monetization. The project is documented through a mobile server and a print publication, each chapter being shaped by a partner.
Read the full summary

Eurozine - Levelled voices: a joint European conversation on recovery

The pandemic offers a chance to fundamentally restructure our economies, rethink how we live, work together and care for each other. But to allow for concepts growing from a truly democratic European discourse, we first need to discuss these issues openly and expansively, which is exactly where Eurozine comes in: reporting on political uses & abuses of the crisis, recovery strategies, and the situation of the people hardest hit by the pandemic.
Read the full summary.

ELMO - East Left Media Outlet: Building ELMO: Solidarity in Translation in Eastern Europe and Beyond

ELMO’s 13 Eastern European media platforms plan to sustain and scale up an emergent structured cooperation. This will include soliciting, translating and publishing articles between at least 11 languages, including English, for both local platforms and a broader European outreach. This exchange will strengthen the cross-border solidarity among already established independent democratic media spaces in the region, where they have used research and storytelling-based journalism to address policy-relevant issues in a media freedom vacuum that has emerged amidst the infodemic.
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IrpiMedia: Life is a game

IriMedia investigates the landscape of platform work and gig economy uncovering its criticalities, which remain largely unexplored despite the extensive use of riders in most European cities, and how the pandemic has influenced the world of riders, especially from a human rights perspective. They aim at shedding light on an issue that is still not perceived as serious while it is creating a progressive and dangerous erosion in workers’ rights protection.
Read the full summary.

Artway of thinking: Teen Tribe - Tools for play the contemporaneity

Teen Tribe - Tools for play the contemporaneity creates, through the growth of awareness of adolescents, the development of an inclusive and long-lasting platform, where digital environment and content are consistent with European values.An Editorial Unit, formed by European youngsters (18-25 y.o.) and an interdisciplinary group of experts, brings into play perceptual sensitivity, empathy, critical ability in living contemporaneity, and fosters the idea of being part of a community of European teenagers.Tools: Live streaming; Online questionnaires; people-to-people platform, Hackathon
Read the full summary.

elDiario.es: European Journalism Festival, with elDiario.es and The Guardian

The European Journalism Festival is a public event to discuss and trigger new forms of collaboration between European media beyond the EU capitals. It will also be the beginning of a new workflow between newsrooms to think, generate and translate weekly quality journalism on European issues.The Festival will bring together during at least 2 days a good representation of elDiario.es and The Guardian newsrooms editors and reporters, as well as key people from other European newsrooms, organizations, developers, translators.
Read the full summary.

Blackcoffee_pdc meets Europe

Blackcoffee_pdc is a podcast on racial issues in Italy created in April 2020. In the context of the pandemic and the social and racial unrest it enhanced, Blackcoffee_pdc meets Europe aims to extend conversations around those themes. In order to do it, they will make Afroitalians' stories available in English to appeal to a European audience. Another of their aims consists of building bridges with Afro-European people and organisations by interviewing and collaborating with them.
Read the full summary.

Project for Democratic Union: European exit strategy from private platforms to common digital space

Europe needs a roadmap on how to advance the creation of a post-platform digital space that enables meaningful public debate. Project for Democratic Union brings together people with ideas for change, the technical skills to make it happen, and policymakers in the field of digital Europe from the European Parliament, the Commission and Council. They will hold a series of online workshops, a physical hackathon in Brussels, and a lobbying effort, promoted by a limited but highly targeted public awareness campaign.
Read full summary.

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